[7][8] It collected demographic data to identify what types of programs would assist underprivileged citizens, and quickly started classes that taught such subjects as home and personal care.
It sponsored health clinics and established after-school programs, and in 1909 began its political activity when it petitioned the Atlanta city council "to rid the community of 'a house of questionable character.
Organizers at the district level investigated every single school, and reported that they were too small, improperly ventilated and dark, and generally overcrowded.
[9] In the 1930s, the Union went into decline, in part because men's organizations, such as the Atlanta Urban League, began to be active in the field of social work and welfare, and often employed professional workers.
[11] Recent scholarship has studied the relationship between John Hope's stereotypical masculine language and activism and the limited space it allotted his wife, and to which extent such organizations had a "maternalist" ideology.